Discovery
by skywalker05
Summary: When Kanan finds out that Ezra was born on Empire Day, he begins piecing rumors together. COMPLETE.


Hera's room had the thickest walls. Kanan, in his years of eavesdropping, knew how sound carried on the _Ghost_ with a precision which was now almost instinct. By design, Hera had soundproofed her room, and, from what Sabine had told him, had installed several measures designed to detect electronic bugs.

"We need to talk."

After he met her eyes in the corridor, Hera accompanied him to her room in silence. She sat on her bed immediately after walking through the door, propped her elbows on her knees, and looked at him. Kanan leaned against the folded pull-out table, his feet almost touching hers. "I think Ezra is dangerous."

She cocked her head and looked at him calmly, with the same poise she showed at the helm. "What happened? I know you bargained on the Inquisitor coming after you again."

Kanan blinked, eyes fixed on the curl of gray blankets next to Hera's left knee, and remembered the Inquisitor slicing through doors, walking slowly, the Force-taste of Luminara Unduli's execution still in Kanan's head. "Yeah."

He had thought over and over about how the Inquisitor had seen Depa Billaba's influence on him even after all those years of street fighting. Even before he went into hiding he had been prone to using a lightsaber like a club. If he'd known he would one day need to disguise even the way he moved, maybe he would have left the lightsaber in pieces. "I've learned a little about him too. It's..." He shook his head, frustrated, and growled through the next word. "Kriff, it's to our advantage that Ezra and I don't know the styles well. The Inquisitor could tear us apart if he could really predict us."

"Sometimes, your weakness can be your strength," Hera said. "Don't the Jedi say that?"

"Yes, we do."

She smiled, and he thought that maybe she considered him just including himself in the Jedi to be some kind of success.

"There's something else," Kanan said. "You know how he told us his birthday was Empire Day?"

Right now, the boy was sitting in another corner of the ship. Kanan couldn't tell whether it was the ball turret or the cockpit. The Force would have guided him as he got closer, if he had thought that further comforting Ezra would have been more helpful than what he had already done at Fort Anaxes. He could tell that Ezra's thoughts were even farther away. Was this what a Master-Padawan bond was like? Kanan only dimly remembered having one. It was hard to pin the Force down, in memory. It made everything, his own memories or Ezra's turmoil or the Inquisitor's sterile, cultivated hatred, feel equally familiar.

"There was one Jedi Knight named Anakin Skywalker," Kanan said. "There were always rumors about him. People said he was close with Senator Palpatine, or that he disappeared or fell to the dark side, depending on who you ask. People said that before the Temple burned, he had a child."

Hera said, "I've heard from Fulcrum that the Empire is looking for Jedi children, but never thought about the distinction between Force-sensitive kids and the ones who had Jedi parents."

Darth Vader and the Empire didn't care about the distinction either, Kanan thought. Vader was another variable, although with the Inquisitor on their tail, there had hardly been time to think of the attack dog's presumed handler.

"The Force isn't really genetic, although people use that as a shorthand. But I'm not an expert on that stuff. What if..." He paused because he felt the realization all over again, sinking in, turning a searchlight on the _Ghost _and its still so fragile family. He had kept his Jedi holocron, but it had been Hera's idea to use it to confirm Ezra's Force potential. He heard the stones clattering as Ezra released them, felt his cold hands. "I think Ezra might be Anakin's kid."

He saw the checklist cross Hera's mind before the fear. Tracking device gone, shields operational, Tseebo safe. Everyone safe. "Do you have other proof?"

"He said that his birthday was Empire Day."

"Yeah. Fulcrum...mentioned that," Hera said.

"When? You were talking about Ezra?"

"When I was talking about Lothal. Capital City has one of the most elaborate Empire Day celebrations in the sector. Of course, that's because it's enforced as part of the academy's schedule, but it is pretty notable that Ezra was born on that day."

"Some of the rumors said that Anakin's kids were born on Empire Day. I always thought that wasn't true. It was too convenient, just made the story sound sadder." Kanan shook his head. "They called Anakin the hero with no fear. But Ezra has a lot of fear. I tried to get him to face it today."

"And the fact that you know that means you can teach him," Hera said.

"You can't just fix broken Jedi," Kanan said. The words came out more quickly than he intended, with the unstoppable push of something memorized. "Starting a bond because you want to fix someone doesn't work."

He leaned back, pressing his spine and armor belt painfully against the wall. The dark side used to give him the idea that pain was okay. It was, in some small way, more mysterious than the burning synthetic crystals at the heart of the Inquisitor's lightsaber, what had made him drink and fight and move from woman to woman. The dark side was the alpha fyrnock rising behind Ezra, muddy brown scales and dirt the same color on Ezra's skin.

Hera straightened up and shook her head, her lekku moving gently and brushing against the blankets behind her. "And that would be true whether or not he was Anakin Skywalker's son. This means that we need to be careful of the Inquisitor, but that was just the same as before."

"It might not be true. But if it is...you see what happens when Force users go bad."

It wasn't in his nature to say that he didn't trust himself to train Ezra, hadn't been holding on to Ezra's shoulders in the close confines of the _Phantom _in order to trap the boy in a controlled space for just a few more moments as much as to reassure him. Kanan flexed his right hand, feeling the thick cloth of his gloves fold against his palm.

Hera said, "I trust you. I trust Ezra."

There was no question that he had been right to go to her alone. Zeb would not be able to end his childish rivalry with Ezra, and Sabine would not want to change the fragile relationship she had with someone she might be coming to think of as a brother.

Hera said, "And I'm going to be careful. I'm going to care for him."

That, Kanan thought, was where Hera was better than him. Where he thought of care as a preventative and defense as an essential, Hera thought the other way around. He nodded, unable, for a moment, to speak past the tightening in his throat.

Although the look in Hera's eyes remained serious, she gave a tight smile.

Later, Kanan stalked through the back of the ship, pausing in the corridor between Sabine's room and the one Zeb and Ezra shared. No sounds came from inside. Kanan wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not. Ezra's room had relatively thin walls.


End file.
